1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to toy vehicles and more particularly to a wheel and axle assembly for toy vehicles.
2. Background Art
Toy vehicles, in particular, motor driven toy vehicles are popular play things. Particularly entertaining are toy vehicles having a reactive feature that is automatically activated upon the wheels encountering an obstacle or impediment. Jarworski U.S. Pat. No. 4,547,173 issued Oct. 15, 1985; D'Andrade U.S. Pat. No. 4,601,519 issued July 22, 1986; and Law U.S. Pat. No. 4,643,696 issued Feb. 17, 1987 disclose toy vehicles with wheels carrying claws that are driven out of the wheel upon the wheel encountering an obstacle. Rosenwinkel et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,773,889 issued Sept. 27, 1988 discloses a toy vehicle having wheels that change from a generally cylindrical closed periphery with an initial diameter to a greater diameter serrated periphery upon encountering an obstacle. The Irwin toy Model 80100-M.U.L.E. KICKER toy vehicle, which is disclosed and claimed in Rosenwinkel U.S. Pat. Application Ser. No. 07/476,253 filed Feb. 7, 1990, discloses a toy vehicle having wheels with a coil spring inside each wheel that is wound tightly when an obstacle is encountered resulting in the wheel spinning out more rapidly upon the obstacle being overcome than the wheel was being driven by the vehicle motor. Nevertheless, there remains a need for other types of toy vehicle wheel and axle assemblies that provided entertaining action features upon the toy vehicle encountering and overcoming an obstacle.